


Don't Tell The Beloved

by amoama



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, Prisoner of Azkaban
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-04
Updated: 2012-11-04
Packaged: 2017-11-17 23:23:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/554333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amoama/pseuds/amoama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Remus hasn't managed to let go of the Sirius he thought he knew at School.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Tell The Beloved

**Author's Note:**

> Companion fic for my waywardmixes fanmix which is posted [here](http://amoama.livejournal.com/11909.html)

The first time I read your name was ~~when you wrote it on the top of your parchment in Charms that first lesson~~ in the Daily Prophet the day after you escaped. 

The first time I heard your name was on the train to Hogwarts, ~~when you introduced yourself to another kid called James Potter,~~ listening to the voice of James’s son discuss your violent murders. I stayed asleep, schooling my face, because it was that or cry in front of my new students. I didn’t know if I was ready to open my eyes and see James or rather, Harry. 

The first time I said your name was ~~when I sat down at the Gryffindor dining table and you said, “Remus, is it?” then I said, “Yes, Sirius, is it?” How auspicious!~~ to a Dementor, fury and shock at their appearance stopping me from stumbling over the word. Sirius. Sirius. “None of us are hiding Sirius Black under our cloaks ~~this time.~~ ”

Suddenly you are everywhere. Suddenly you’re free.

Sirius.

You’re out there. You’re out. You’re free.

Where are you?

How are you? 

The picture in the Prophet. Old already, not recent. You could look worse by now.

Being back at Hogwarts now is the strangest, sweetest torment anyone could have dreamt up. Every corner, every cupboard, every stairwell is layered with memories.

It’s just one more night until the full moon, my first back here, and I was feeling so tired and weak yesterday that I sat alone in the staff room for hours reading through old detention slips. I thought about burning them, our happy history has been so thoroughly erased by what came next, but I couldn’t because they reminded me of something I haven’t believed in a while. It was real. Our happiness, our friendship. It was all real. For the first time in I don’t know how many years, it was what came after that felt unreal, unbelievable, that our group, our merry band of marauding knights could have turned on each other after having loved each other so much. 

Did you know you set off 287 dungbombs in third year? Those were the ones you got caught for any way. It averages at about 7 a week which is pretty believable if you ask me. That was the year you and James competed for the dungbomb-exploding title after all. 100 were from the one incident in the Potions lab when you put ten in each of the Slytherin’s cauldrons before they got to class. I still don’t think the smell of that has left my nose. It was after that McGonagall made Zonko’s stop selling to you and you had to recruit Pete and I as your mules. It was always worth it for the chocolate you bought me in exchange.

See what it’s like? When was the last time you thought about any of this? When was the last time you remembered something about us and smiled? That’s what it’s like being here. And then I look up and there are no other marauders left. I’m the last one. And you, but you disqualified yourself a long time ago. 

I try not to ask, “How could you?” and “Why didn’t you come for me too?” Those questions tore me up worse than the damage the wolf does to me at full moon. Those are the great gashes that clawed through my flesh and never healed. 

How often did I go over it in my mind? When? When? That was always the question. When did you stop being the Sirius I knew? 

I see you in my mind, 11 under the Sorting Hat. I didn’t know at the time why it was that you looked so determined, I just saw your eyes shine, relief, shock, delight as you made your way to the Gryffindor table. I didn’t know what it meant to you. But to me it meant that Gryffindor must be the best, must be what I should hope for as I waited for my name to be called.

Your name is on everybody’s lips now. Whispered in lessons, loud across the dining tables, just like it always was when another great prank had been pulled and the whole school was talking about it, discussing how Black and Potter could have “pulled it off”. And I would sit smiling quietly, half relieved half annoyed that my name was never mentioned along with yours, until you would turn to wink at me, sometimes accompanied by a little salute, in honour of whatever my part had been in the mischief. You were the one who always insisted on keeping my name clean – my name is only on a quarter of the detention slips that yours are. Did you know that? It seems like quite an achievement given how close to your side I stuck in those years. You never wanted to drag me down with you.

You didn’t drag me down with you - even at the end. So when did you stop being you? I’ve spent a decade analysing our past and asking myself that and then trying to forget. 

I hear your name everywhere. You were here, at Hogwarts, trying to get into the Gryffindor common room. Do you know I’m here? Do you know Serverus Snape is here too? That he would give anything to find proof that I was the one who let you in. You could still take me down with you it turns out.  
But it’s the same as always. I wouldn’t choose to be anywhere else. Even if this time it’s so that I can protect Harry and the others from you, even if it’s so that I can be the one stood uselessly in front of you, like Peter did, to try and bring your rampage to a halt. There’s no point in questions - I try to accept all these new facts. You’re here and I don’t know you. The you I knew would have come to me, the you I knew would have run with me two nights ago when the full moon struck, would have wrapped your comforting canine body around mine as I whimpered in the dark disabled by the potion Snape makes me. The wolf still longs for you, for all his friends, but the wolf would also kill you, for taking them from him. 

I know how you escaped, how you got into Hogwarts unaided and unapprehended. Does that make Snape right? I am complicit, I am aiding you. But I can’t tell, I can’t. I let them all wonder, the students and the staff, I let your name reverberate around my ears and I say nothing because I can’t. That secret is all I have left, the one part of you that I know is all mine - that connects us to who we were. I have believed you guilty of all the charges levelled against you, of all the atrocities that cannot be argued against, but I do not believe that you will have told Voldemort about Padfoot. Padfoot is mine. To believe that you gave him away would leave me with nothing left. 

Sirius. Sirius. They talk about you. You’re mad. You’re a murderer. You’re the Blackest Black, the ultimate betrayer of blood and honour and friendship. I know all this. And I am here to stop you if I have to, but I’m also here for my answers. Come to me. I am still a daredevil it seems, just like you were. Come to me. I risk the lives of all around me to keep our secret and to dare you: come to me. 

Always you were unknowable to me in some ways. Unfathomable. From the start, you were so cool – and isn’t that always something undeterminable? Confident and aloof one minute, goofy and idiotic the next. Impulsive, fierce, loyal, nursing hidden hurts that I couldn’t imagine or comprehend. I watched you, saw you drip disdain over one classmate and then leap to defend the same person moments later. I saw how much you liked me, and later, realised just how deeply you cared for me, how fervently you loved me, how I stirred a seemingly ceaseless lust within you; all I could do was wonder at it, at you. At all your dimensions. You were too wonderful to be real – that was my secret belief when I looked at you. Even those times (oh so much of the time) when you were being so irritating I wanted to scream holy hell at you, there was still that element of disbelief – how could anyone really be this infuriating? 

It made sense, it still makes sense to me, that the Sirius I knew turned out not to be real. He burned too brightly, as they say. I should have known, we all should have realised, the great Sirius Black, the renegade, the best of friends. He was too good to be true. 

But I walk round this school, the halls of my memory, and I still cannot regret him. My heart makes a traitor of me even now because that boy freed me, made me human, gave a childhood to a bitter 11 year old werewolf with no hope of a life. I’m glad I don’t need to go anywhere near Gryffindor Tower now, I don’t need to be in those rooms where we were all the happiest, that tiny dormitory that we’d all been in about five minutes when you stood up on the bed you’d claimed, opposite mine, and declared to the whole room, “Let’s be best friends. Let’s be the best group of friends Hogwarts has ever seen.” You’d smiled down at us, beatific, “I’m Sirius!” you’d said, and James had thrown a pillow at you, “You all seem decent and we’re stuck together anyway. Let’s decide to get along famously. Let’s be famous for how famously we get along.” I think that was when I threw my pillow at you. And Peter threw his right after but we didn’t disagree with you. That was the easiest decision of my life. 

If you’d got past the Fat Lady, if you’d made it up to the tower, got to the common room, or the dormitory, found Harry. Could you have gone through with it? Would you have been able to see past all the memories, all the happiness? Are you so mad, so bitter, so lost, that you could have desecrated our youth? I suppose you could have. I suppose you are long gone, what are those memories to you when you are already responsible for the deaths of half the group? Famously so. 

Why is it that every time I say your name it feels like a lie? 

I spoke to Harry today. Did you know he’s brilliant at Quidditch, he already plays seeker for Gryffindor. That’s the kind of thing that makes me miss James so much, you know how insufferable he would be about that. Thinking about that is what makes me steel my insides so I can call you Black and not tell Harry what you should have been to him, what you took from him. I think about another life where two illegal animagi sneak onto Hogwarts grounds to watch House matches, I picture Prongs completely still, eyes focused intently on Harry’s flying while you bound around unable to contain your excitement, willing Harry on with every fibre of your being. Wouldn’t that have been nice, Pads? The you in my head agrees. My Sirius, he would have loved that. 

Bitterness swallows me every time I have to say your name out loud, a reminder to my wayward mind that the real Sirius scorned that life.

McGonagall told me something today (and you know, it’s funny, I’m supposed to call her Minerva now but somehow I can’t so I always end up saying something like Prof-er-Minerva which is unfortunate. Really how am I a teacher? I don’t quite believe it). Anyway, she said that when Fudge saw you in Azkaban you seemed unaffected by the Dementors and that calm as anything you asked for his newspaper to do the crossword. I can see you as you said that and that terrifies me because it does sound like you, not the mad, evil Sirius at all. It sounds like you finding a way to survive in there, to keep your spirits up. It sounds like you being a Gryffindor. It breaks my heart. Sirius. Again. How many times now? Splinter upon splinter. McGonagall treats me so kindly, I think she respects me as a teacher (can you believe it?) but she treats me with kid gloves too and she looks at me with these eyes that see right through me. You remember that time she caught us coming out of the DADA classroom after break, still rearranging robes and you trying to flatten out my hair or something? No? Well she does, she looks at me like she remembers that and knows how spliced open my heart is. Oh how I hate you, and how I love you (loved – is what I’m aiming for I suppose), if only I could forget one or the other, I would feel so much more up together. 

How could you? Why why why why why? I know what I said, that these questions are no good. But god Sirius what happened? I’ll never stop wanting to know. 

I’m helping Harry to produce a Patronus against the Dementors. He hears their voices Sirius - Lily and tonight, James, for the first time. He said he heard James tell Lily to run for it when Voldemort arrived. How can you live with it, knowing that in those moments James will have known you betrayed him, that it couldn’t have been anyone at all but you who caused their deaths? How could you break us all apart like that? Couldn’t you see how good we had it? Harry asked me, did I know you. What could I say? “Yes,” I said, “I knew him. Or thought I did.” 

I thought I did - every inch of your body, practically every moment of your life, for a decade. We grew up together. If that isn’t enough to know someone, what is? Are there parts of us all that will always be unknowable to other people? I’ve lived most of my life hiding who I am from as many people as possible. I should know about this. I thought I would recognise if you were hiding a darkness like mine within you; but you were battling your darkness so publically, so openly holding yourself away from it. Oh how I thought I knew you, your beauty and your brilliance and your brooding soul. 

Would they be able to find your soul – the Dementors – if they catch you? What remains of you Sirius? I read in the Prophet this morning. They’re going to give you the Kiss if they find you. I told Harry about it today. I can’t help how much I enjoy spending time with him. More than just how much it’s like having a piece of James back. Harry thinks you deserve this Kiss. That’s what he told me. But I don’t want it done. Not yet anyway. You’re no use to me soulless. I need you as in tact as I can get you. What’s left, whatever it is that’s left of you, I want it. Sirius Black I have loved you with my whole soul and whatever you may deserve, I know, that what I deserve is answers. The doors are open for you. Don’t return to your Dark Lord. Return to me. 

You were in the castle again. I can’t pretend to understand. What is it you’re after? Everything you’re doing to get to Harry seems so clumsy. So unlike you. Is this the by-product of insanity? But you were always a little crazy and still an excellent strategic thinker, no matter how complicated the prank. And here you are, not even checking to see if you got the right bed before you attacked. 

Did you send the Firebolt to Harry? Everyone thought you did. Harry used it for the first time today, after it got thoroughly checked. It wasn’t hexed or jinxed or cursed. It was just a gift. An extravagant gift from an anonymous source. I’ve received a few of those in my time and I always knew who they were from too. Harry flew spectacularly on the Firebolt. I watched him, but I also watched the grounds, hoping to see you. I don’t know how I imagine it will go if we do meet. I don’t know what I will feel the strongest when I look at you. I don’t know who will speak or who will attack first. Do you even have a wand? Do you have anything to say to me? 

They say the Dementors drain you of your happy memories. I cling to the fact that we had some sad ones too – isn’t that awful – but I’m desperate to be remembered by you because I can’t forget. Think Sirius, think of all the times we fought, as men and as beasts. Think of the time in Potions when I spilt a half made invisibility potion on your crotch and your trousers dissolved and half your skin burnt off. I suppose you may have forgotten about the post-Potions blow job rule you instated as recompense for your suffering. Think of the day you were disinherited, think of the time I nearly killed Snape because you sent him to me as I transformed, think of how mad I was, think of how stupid and sorry you were, think of how I transformed without you the next month because I couldn’t forgive you. Think of the next morning when you came to me. Think Sirius, remember back to the sorrows our happiness was built on. Think back to the war, to how you distrusted me, how you lied to me and I to you, what I was doing for the Order, what you were doing for Voldemort. Think how our bodies didn’t lie, how we still came together, worried and unhappy, thrusting and grasping, both our bodies pale and bruised, preferring to make our own bruises to cover the ones we had no answers for. 

Do you remember what you said? One of those last nights when we found we couldn’t sleep, bags strewn around us, planning to move hideouts at dawn. “Let’s each make a list,” you said, “Let’s make a list in our heads of what we’ll tell each other after the war. Make a note of every secret you keep, every bit of information you withhold that you wish you could tell me.”

“I’m full, Remus,” you said, “I’m full of things I wish I could talk over with you.” 

And I agreed and we both lay there, making our mental lists, saying them in our heads, guarding them away. But it did make me feel better, almost as good as if I’d told you about the trips to Kiev and the Prussian forest and the dirty bargains only half-humans can make. 

I’d never felt less human than in those days. You used to bring me back to myself but it seemed to take longer and longer. I looked at you, your eyes full of your own secrets and I loved you. It seemed as though you were holding onto me with all your might. I felt like the tide was turning, dragging you out, and that my job was to hold firmly onto you. 

“We need to finish this,” you said, your face was as determined as that first day under the Sorting Hat. It gave me strength to see you hadn’t lost that look in these uncertain times.

“We will,” I said, “We will.” 

I didn’t know how it was that you planned to finish it. I still don’t know what I could have said to stop you. 

I found something today. Or rather, I reclaimed something. Our map. It is still so gorgeous, a beautiful legacy, if only it were our only one. All I do now is stare at it, waiting for you to appear. I know you will soon. I whisper to it. “Padfoot, Padfoot, where are you?” 

The map thinks I am a strange creature. It knows I am Moony – how could it not know one of its creators – but it doesn’t understand me as I am now. Mssrs Padfoot and Prongs have begun teasing Mr Moony relentlessly for getting old and maudlin. Mr Wormtail is mostly quiet but occasionally pipes up asking if I’m feeling peaky. Mr Padfoot’s suggestions for locating himself are becoming lewder by the hour. I nearly shut the map on him when he got to “checked he didn’t disappear down any cracks lately” the flame of familiar, benign annoyance jolted me back to my purpose. I’m not supposed to be annoyed by you – I’m supposed to fear and despise you. 

I watch the map. I watch Harry and his friends, I watch Longbottom and Malfoy and Snape. I watch McGonagall and Dumbledore. I watch Filch and Mrs Norris - old habits die hard. I don’t make any plans. 

But it’s not you who appears on the map. It’s Peter. 

I close the map and open it again. I solemnly swear that I am up to no good. Even as I check the seams of the map’s magic, I know that it’s not a malfunction, that I am on the cusp of finding my answers and the jolt of incomprehensible hope that flies through me makes me light-headed. The map unfurls itself once more and Peter’s still there, and then you, racing towards him. One piece falls into place. _He’s at Hogwarts_ means Peter not Harry. You’re after Peter. 

I’m running to where you are, wishing away my aches and pains as I hurry towards the Shack, my Shack. Suddenly it seems so natural that we should meet there. You haven’t given any indication that you remember me, that I mean anything to you, except this, now. Coincidence or convenience or fate, you are in my Shack now, my cage, where you always came to help me and comfort me. Perhaps, just perhaps, there are still the remains of me in your subconscious. I keep running and try to deny the way my heart soars, “Padfoot.” 

You look like death. It’s a shock, a jarring dissonance between my memories of you and the pale, haggard ghost you are now. 

You don’t speak and you don’t speak and you don’t speak. Your eyes bore into me, shell-shocked and desperate. “Where is he, Sirius?” I ask you. How funny to be able to expect a reply after so long talking to your absence. You point at him and suddenly I have all my answers, just by looking at you, just by following the line of your thin, wasted arm towards the rat in Ron’s hands. You still haven’t spoken to me but I already know everything. I don’t wait any longer and I’m in your arms like I never thought I’d be again. You’re stiff against me and I’m sure you didn’t know I was here at Hogwarts. Then I feel your left hand gripping the back of my robe, pressing into my spine like I’m the life-raft. 

Hermione screams and I remember the scared children behind me, the child whose parents are still dead and who doesn’t understand why. I stand beside you as I untangle the story, fitting the pieces back into place in my own mind, feeling the truth of it, the tragedy and the error. 

In some ways you are insane now, murderous certainly. It clouds your voice when I finally, finally, hear it. You have one purpose and it’s revenge. Peter is the one to blame. Hatred flares in me. How I have wasted my grief on him, the one who took everything from me, took your freedom, took Harry’s parents from him, took all my friends. Everything about your broken body and your tortured mind, how you have been made to suffer for his crime, makes me want to rip him from this earth with a spell so strong it will be like he never existed. 

Eventually you start talking, full sentences of explanation, about finding out about Peter’s whereabouts, about escaping. I hear your guilt oozing round your words. Sirius, Sirius, always punishing yourself far more than you deserve. My heart is in freefall, knitting itself together just to crack in completely new places. 

“Together?” You say as we turn on Peter at last. 

“I thinks so.” I reply, and close my eyes to the longing sweeping through me, a flood of feelings I’ve been holding back these long years. Now isn’t the time. But perhaps it will be. Soon. 

For a little while.


End file.
